Some move in all
directions in turn.At the centre lies
the circle. At once enticing and frightening.

We at once approach
it and move further away.

Our movement around the circle is a magical game, often
called Life."

Lilija Dinere

"The exhibition "Unknown Garden" (2006)by Lilija Dinere is the 21st personal
exhibition for this artist at the Latvian National Museum of Art. The exhibition
presents more than 170 works - graphics, water colours, paintings, painted
photographs and book illustrations. Visitors can review the artist's various
techniques, the way in which she developed her style and the system of images
and symbols which dates back to a period before 1980. The exhibition, in short,
is a collection of 25 years of work.

"Unknown Garden" carries us into a world made up of archetypal images and
symbolic signs. Humans and gods, birds and animals come together here, in the
vastness of the world. They come from antique mythology, from Ancient Egypt and
India, from the Eastern cultures, from Celtic and ancient oguz tribes, from
Medieval culture, and from many other inspirations. The images can flow together
in a single artwork, erasing the borders between East and West, between the
pre-Christian and the Christian period. These are messages which stand above a
specific time. Myths, fairy tales and epic legends are presented in Lilija
Dinere's art as a way of presenting the structure of the modern world. Here we
see the concept of eternal and simultaneous existence.

Lilija Dinere was graduated from the Latvian Academy of art in 1980 as a painter
- stage designer. Her graduate project was a set design for the Sophocles
tragedy "Antigone," and her work brought her into a mythical world. The artist
began to study Ancient Greek myths and mysteries, focusing in particular on
their esoteric meaning.

Even though she was trained as a set designer, Lilija Dinere soon began to work
with graphics and as an independent artist. Lithographs were her earliest
products, then she produced colourful engravings on zinc, with flowing transfers
and variations of colour. In the 1980s, this was something completely new in the
Latvian world of graphics. Between 1979 and 1981 she created a 21-work cycle
called "Play With Circle". Between 1981 and 1990, she produced a seven-work
cycle called "Procession." In 1985, she produced variations called "Pyramid,"
and in 1983 audiences first saw a cycle of etchings under the title of "Inhabitants."
These are collections in which elements of diverse cultures first appeared, and
they made it clear that the artist's mind was focused on culture and history.

The artist turned to paints and easels in the 1990s - a new period in her art.
She used acrylic paint to create delicate and precise images on canvas. Her
central subject is the ambivalent nature of humankind, the conflicting
properties which are brought together in people. The symbolic meaning of the
images is built up in paradoxes. Anthropological animals and zoological humans
are presented as figures in a single image - the visible and the hidden aspects
of nature. Animals can have human faces and eyes, and humans can be as ferocious
as animals. The inner world of images is complex, but externally the artist
presents the images in a schematically simplified way, seeking to crystallise
the symbols of signs and colours.

Water colours are another important aspect of Lilija Dinere's art, she has
worked with water colours throughout her life as an artist. Some present pure
and vivid colours, with paintings strongly reminiscent of those that the artist
has produced with acrylic paints. Other water colours have greater nuance, they
are quieter, presenting an emotionally delicate vibration which makes them
particularly fragile.

Photography entered Dinere's art in the latter half of the 1990s. The artist has
taken the textures of photographic images and painted her own figures with
acrylic paint straight onto the photographs. The impression is of figures from
an animated film, ones that have appeared in an unaccustomed environment so as
to create a surreally mystical effect - a merger of different worlds.

Since 2000, the artist has made another discovery - handmade Himalayan paper.
The rough texture and surface become an active element of the background, and
the acrylic paintings literally interweave with the texture of the paper itself.

In addition to much exhibition work, this artist has been active book
illustrator. Some of the original illustrations and some of the books are shown
in this exhibition. One of Lilija Dinere's masterpieces of book illustration is
the art which she produced for a 1985 translation of the Medieval French poet
Francois Villon's "Poetry". In 1987, at a pan-Baltic books competition, the
translation was declared to be the "Most Beautiful Book of the Year." In
preparing for the project, the artist studied Medieval miniatures, or
illuminations, as they were known at that time. Ever since that time, she has
illuminated books, as she puts it - lighting them from the inside, making them
lively and colourful.

Studies in ethnography and folklore at the archives of the Academy of Science of
Azerbaijan helped in illustrating an epic from the ancient tribe of the ancient
progenitors of the modern-day Turkish, Azerbaijani and Turkmen people. The epic
was called "Book of Dede Korkud" (1993), translated by Uldis Bērziņš, and the
strength of the world of images therein is passionate, ferocious and militant.
Much more gentle are the 24 miniatures which were printed (1993) for a
multi-lingual mini-book containing the "Hebrew Melodies" by Lord Byron. The
artist's illustrations present images from the Old Testament, from the Ancient
Hebrews, from the Psalms and from Celtic myths, but she has also created works
for more than 50 collections of contemporary poetry and children's stories.

The exhibition has been hung so as to accent the power of colour. On one side,
there is the passionate and active colour that is red, while on the other side
there is meditative colour of blue. In some cases, the two flow together.

Symbols are important in the art of Lilija Dinere, and the circle can be seen as
the most important one of all. The circle is a universal form, it contains
everything - a centre, endlessness, a form which always returns to itself. It is
the symbol of unity, absoluteness and completion. The circle is also an object
for meditation, the nucleus of the soul. As an endless line, the circle
symbolises time and endlessness, and it is often presented as a snake which is
swallowing its own tail. Snakes are common in Dinere's art, and their unique
nature among other living creatures make them particularly frightening, but the
artist uses snakes as a sign, not as an evil enemy of human beings. The rings of
snakes confirm the spiral cycle of cosmic energy. The snake has been assigned
the role of the temptress, and that brings us to the tree in the Garden of Eden.
The tree is no less important to the artist than the circle. the tree is a
vertical symbol which connects Heaven and Earth. The crowns of trees are home to
mythical animals and the souls of those who have died or have not yet been born.
Birds who live in the crowns of the world's trees symbolise the highest level of
spiritual development. Birds can live in the air, they represent other
dimensions. Birds are non-material, they can be a manifestation of the soul.
Birds in the air, fish in the water, the fish in Dinere's works - this hidden
symbol of Christ, Shiva and spiritual symbol can be found anywhere, but it is
particularly successfully presented in the form of the eye - the symbol of
spiritual observation, the mirror of the soul. The eye is a symbol of
all-encompassing knowledge, alertness, and the protective presence of God.

All of these universal symbols are ones which encompass woman and man, both
separately and together. There are Biblical images, there are human beings as
such. There are mythological creatures in this world - dragons, chimeras,
sirens, wolves, horses and the fabled unicorn. Even a shadow is not just a
shadow, it represents semi-consciousness or unconsciousness, while the light
represents consciousness. Everything is included in symbolic mysteries, even the
gestures of the living beings that are presented, even, and of course, the use
of colour. The artist largely relies on pure and intensive colours, and they are
often used in accordance with their symbolic meaning. Blue is used to represent
the sky, but it also speaks to non-material and spiritual epiphany, of
meditation. Green is the colour of life and resurrection, red represents love
and passion, yellow is close to gold, to light and the Sun. The artist does not,
however, exclude the possibility of intuitive colour choice, because the alchemy
of creating energy forces a merger of the rational and the irrational.

The main leitmotif in Lilija Dinere's work is the concept of time or, to put it
more precisely, the idea of eternity. Lilija Dinere does not use a linear sense
of time. For her, all time is in the here and now, all time has existed forever. "